


Sway through the crowd to an empty space

by lanyon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five tropes that didn't get Steve and Bucky together and the one that did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sway through the crowd to an empty space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haipollai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/gifts).



> +For my darling **haipollai** , one of my best friends in the entire world and who deserves nothing but good things and who's getting, for her sins, this rather late birthday fic.  
> +Thanks to **beardsley** , who I love like crazy, for her support and to **sirona** for some world-class cheerleading.  
>  +Title from Bowie's _Let's Dance_.

**i. snowed in**

(It’s perfect. That’s what Stark says; it’s even a Canadian shack. He knows his tropes and he knows his nonagenarians and he says that it’s all so obvious.

And no, no, says Pepper. You can’t install JARVIS in the shack. It defeats the purpose.

And what are you, anyway? asks Barton. Some kind of voyeur?

Barton doesn’t see the irony. So much for great vision.)

“Honestly,” says Bucky, putting his feet on the coffee table (which still has a label attached: _100% reclaimed Alaskan wood_ ). “Honestly, I have my doubts.”

“About what?” asks Steve, poking at the roaring fire and relishing the heat before poking at Bucky to move over. 

“That this was a legitimate op in the first place.” Bucky gestures. “It feels like a set-up.”

“You think S.H.I.E.L.D. set us up?” Steve’s confused; it’s not that he trusts S.H.I.E.L.D. but this seems rather elaborate. 

“I think they set _you_ up, buddy,” says Bucky. “When was the last time you took a holiday, anyway?”

Steve rubs his forehead with his fingertips. “I’m not sure if you noticed, Buck, but I’ve been kinda busy.” Between Chitauri and the webs of red paper and red, seeping wounds that have accompanied Bucky’s return, Steve hasn’t really had the time or inclination to stop. “In any case, I was asleep for-”

“Seventy years in an icy, icy grave, I hear you,” says Bucky and he holds up his left hand for a fist-bump. Too much time with Clint, Steve thinks. (He obliges, anyway.) 

“The comms are down and we’ve got food for a week,” says Steve. He draws his legs up, under his body, as though he is small again, and Bucky slings an arm around his shoulders, as though he is small again. 

“So, let’s wait, what- three days? Four? Before contacting S.H.I.E.L.D. with our coordinates?”

“And what should we do for three or four days, Buck?”

(They _slept_ and not even together. They slept and read and Cap sketched and Barnes practised tai chi. Stark is disgusted.)

**ii. amnesia**

(So, Barnes has no idea who he is and we’re not on DEFCON 1? I don’t get it. 

Don’t worry, Barton. He has _no_ idea who he is and he’s certainly never heard of the Winter Soldier.

Oh. Oh. That’s a relief.)

They’re calling him James or Barnes and his ID, issued by a shady-sounding government division called S.H.I.E.L.D., says that he’s James Buchanan Barnes which is a mouthful if ever he heard one. There’s the one guy, though, the one who walks into a room and everyone shuts up and listens, and he calls him _Bucky_ and he has this sad smile when he says it. 

He’s beautiful. James or Barnes or _Bucky_ thinks that Captain Steve Rogers is beautiful and if he never knows anything else about himself, he thinks that’ll be enough. 

Rogers says James should stay with him. James asks him to keep calling him Bucky. 

“Maybe it’ll jog a memory,” he says, hopefully. “Or maybe it’ll make me feel like someone. There’s nothing worse than feeling like no one.” 

That makes Rogers stop dead, right there on a Brooklyn sidewalk, and a muscle in his jaw twitches and his eyes are sadder and older than they should be and he nods. 

“You’re not no one, Bucky,” he says, on a soft and fierce exhale. He takes Bucky’s hand, like it’s nothing, and he tells him about their life together, or their lives. 

“I gotta say you’re convincing,” says Bucky, with a bright smile. He doesn’t feel like he’s ninety or a killer, though his metal arm says otherwise, like the gnarled scars on his chest and shoulder, and like Rogers’ improbable words. “If the guy with the-” (he gestures to demonstrate impossibly well cultivated facial hair) “- tried to tell me this shit, I’d never believe him.”

“He has that way,” says Rogers, fondly, and Bucky wonders for a minute but it’s his fingers laced with Rogers and now it’s Bucky’s turn to stop dead. 

“Are we-?” he asks.

“Do we-?” he tries again. 

“Am I-?” 

“You’re Bucky Barnes,” says Steve. “And you’re my best friend,” he says, like it’s that simple, and maybe it is and maybe that’s all Bucky needs to know.

(So, you wanted to jump Cap’s bones and you could’ve jumped Cap’s bones, free of charge, and you didn’t? 

Barton is scandalised and Barnes just shrugs. 

It wouldn’t’ve been right, man.

Barton can only offer a desultory fistbump in the name of truth and justice.)

**iii. fake married**

(Nick, if I didn’t know better-

But you do know better, Cheese.)

Bucky bounces up and down on the bed. “C’mon, Mr Barnes, you gotta admit it’s pretty funny.”

“I gotta admit it’s pretty unlikely,” says Steve, folding his arms. He’s not smiling and he can’t and he won’t. (He smiles.) “There are dozens of covert operatives in this organisation. Why us?”

“Because, in all those dozens, there’s no one better matched than us.”

“I never had you pegged as a romantic, Mr Barnes,” says Steve, entering into the spirit, in spite of himself. His lips twitch. “Anyway, don’t you think that Coulson and Ward-?”

Bucky shudders. “Wash your brain out, Steve.” He lies back on the bed. “C’mon. Catch some Zs. We gotta get our glad rags on later.”

Steve hesitates before nudging off his shoes. He sits down and looks over his shoulder at Bucky, who’s smiling at him, his hands behind his head. Their mark is hosting a charity ball (the charity being AIM) and that means that Steve and Bucky have to wear tuxes and-

“Oh god,” says Steve. “Oh _god_ -”

“Lord’s name in vain,” mumbles Bucky. His eyes are closed. 

“Bucky, I can’t do this, I can’t-” Steve can sense Bucky tensing behind him as though Steve’s about to drop a bombshell. “I can’t dance.”

The bed shakes as Bucky laughs; a full, deep belly-laugh. Steve’s head drops and the bed moves some more and then Bucky’s curled up at Steve’s back. 

“Buddy, it’s okay.” Steve’s ready to be embarrassed.

Steve can feel Bucky’s hand on his back and he doesn’t even know if it’s the metal one or not (it’s all the same).

“It’s okay. I’ll lead.”

(So, they slow-danced in front of the great and the good and they still haven’t-

I’m afraid not, sir. I’m afraid not.)

**iv. sex pollen**

(It’s an accident. That’s what Drs Foster, Banner and Morse say. As though there’s such a thing as accidents when an astrophysicist, a nuclear physicist and a biologist play together. As though there’s such a thing as anything else.)

“I can’t.” Steve is sweating like he’s never sweated before. He’s soaked through his uniform which is fucking climate-controlled. Bucky’s never seen him this bad, not even when he had probably tuberculosis in the thirties. 

Bucky’s not much better. His arms are handcuffed to each other behind his back and he knows that he could get out of the cuffs but he can’t. He can’t. 

He and Steve are in a lab; they’re in an annex off a lab and there are bells going off behind the heavy locked doors. A brief announcement in their comms told them that they were in quarantine and just to sit tight. 

Steve’s tied up, too, and it’s a joke and it’s a challenge to pretend that ropes mean a thing to a super soldier. 

“I would,” says Steve, softly and wistfully. His lips are cracked and his voice is thick. His tongue must be as dry as Bucky’s and Bucky wishes, he wants, he burns and burns and - 

“I-” says Bucky. He looks at Steve and looks into those endlessly blue eyes and he lets out a slow and shaky breath. “I would, I would.”

“Not like this though,” says Steve and he shifts slightly and he moans and Bucky’s gaze flickers down and he sees how Steve is filling out his uniform. Bucky reflexively licks his lips. “No fair,” sighs Steve but he’s smiling, even though the corners of his lips are cracked. 

“Maybe when this is over,” says Bucky (and maybe when this is over and his balls haven’t exploded and his skin hasn’t burned right off). “Maybe we can go on a date.”

Steve chuckles and the sound is throaty and impossibly arousing. “Coney Island.”

“Mmph, it’s so nineteen thirty-seven,” says Bucky. 

“So not Coney Island.”

(More like Fire Island, Jesus fuck, how do they do it?

Mutual respect, Tony. Mutual respect.

I mutually respect you, big guy, and we’re not, like, burning up on entry like these fellas.)

**v. de-aged**

(My respect for Dr Erskine just shot up, in the way that Cap hasn’t.

He’s so tiny. Pocket-sized.

Breakable.)

Steve sighs and it turns into a body-wracking cough. “But I don’t understand.”

Steve is fifteen and scrawny like a sparrow and Bucky doesn’t understand either.

“It’s hard to explain,” says Bucky. “But -” He pauses. “You trust me?”

“Sure I do, pal,” says Steve and his smile takes up half his face. “Even if you’re huge and -” He squints at Bucky’s arm. “Half-automaton.”

“All the better to haul your ass out of fights, buddy.” Bucky’s forgotten that this is how it was; how he was the guy Steve looked up to and it makes as much sense now as it did then. He’s not sure, though, that Steve’s always looked at him like this. It’s more than admiration and it makes Bucky feel warm under his skin. 

“Can we go home?” asks Steve. He’s kicking his feet back and forth and he’s nowhere near touching the ground.

“About that-” says Bucky. “Brooklyn’s kinda changed. Home is -”

Home is the brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and Steve’s jaw drops when he realises that it’s all theirs. He looks a little pale, a little on the verge of an asthma attack, and Bucky pulls him into his arms and if Steve crawls into Bucky’s bed that night, it’s something no one else needs to know.

(So Barnes treated baby Rogers so so right, huh?

Say it with me, Stark. _Mutual respect_.)

**+1. coffee shop**

“Kindles?”

“Check.”

“Wallet?”

“Check.”

“Concealed weapons?”

“Check, check and check.”

Steve’s fingers circle Bucky’s wrist and they walk down the street to the new breakfast place that opened up a few weeks back and is not a front for the mafia, or Stark Industries, or HYDRA, and is run by a young Russian couple, who probably have nothing to do with Department X. 

Bucky snags a copy of the _Moskovskaya Pravda_ and they sit in their usual booth, next to each other. Steve’s arm settles around Bucky’s shoulders.

“Stark?”

“In Malibu.”

“Banner?”

“In … science, somewhere.”

“Thor?”

“In Asgard.”

“Natasha?”

Bucky taps the open page of the newspaper where there’s a black and white picture of the Black Widow, posing as an aide to a Russian general.

“Coulson?”

“In Barton. _Ouch-_ ”

“No need to be crude-”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

Steve’s lips brush over Bucky’s ear. “And it’s not what I’ll be saying tonight.” 

They grin at each other because they both know inevitability, and each other.

**Author's Note:**

> +We all adore this pairing and it's so wonderful to see it thriving - do consider checking out the [Steve/Bucky prompt fest](http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org), over at Dreamwidth, where there are prompts and discussions ongoing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Sway through the crowd to an empty space](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2162754) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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